It seems that it took a large green dinosaur to remind me why I feel that we are getting back very close to Doomsday. I was born in WW II, before Stalingrad or Midway, and grew up during the 50's. I was at a school that got one of the first Salk polio vaccines - something dripped onto a sugar cube. I remember wondering if when the first H-bomb was tested it would start a nuclear chain reaction of the atmosphere and blow the world away. This came from a comic book I read at that time. My parents were unconcerned. I didn't know then that my Aunt Dorothy was the Naval administrative officer in charge of all administration on the Bikini H-Bomb test. [She was later removed from active duty and transferred to the Reserves in about 1958 because Congress under Eisenhower passed a law stating that no woman in the navy could remain on active duty if she was a Lt. Commander or higher. She was a Lt. Commander.]
I remember also the Doomsday clock, created in 1947, and set initially at 7 minutes to midnight. Midnight was the time of global catastrophe from nuclear war. It was set at two minutes to midnight in 1953 following U.S. and Soviet hydrogen bomb tests. Well, it's back in the news again, set at 7 minutes to midnight.
With that build up, go read Trex's emotional description of current events. He starts with a vignette from an Emergency Medical Technician he knows, and goes on to the Doomsday clock. Go Read it here.
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